Handpan Scales Six Example Maps, Note by Note

A handpan is a scale you can touch: every tone field belongs to one mode, so there are no wrong notes inside the layout — only better and worse choices of order, hand and touch. That is why the scale you choose matters more on handpan than on almost any other instrument: it is the whole harmonic world of the pan. All six pans here share a D3 ding; what changes is the ladder of rim notes built above it, from the complete minor of the Kurd to the raised-third tension of Hijaz and the spacious pentatonics of Pygmy and Akebono.

Practising a layout is its own technique. Walk the scale as the numbers run — lowest rim note to highest, alternating right and left the way the map suggests — until your hands know the geography without your eyes. Then break the ladder: ding-to-field leaps, neighbour pairs, and the octave and fifth against the ding, which ring longest and tune your ear to the pan. Strike with a relaxed finger and let the field ring; pressing into the metal after the strike only chokes it.

Each page maps one example with numbers, notes, intervals against the ding and suggested hands. These are website references. They do not describe the app’s complete scale library or guarantee a match to your physical pan.